Putin touts $112b trade with CIS, hails shift to national currency settlements
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s trade with Commonwealth of Independent States countries grew 7% in 2024 to reach $112 billion, while member states have shifted 96% of their settlements to national currencies as Moscow seeks to bypass Western sanctions.
‘Our countries are creating a stable financial infrastructure that is independent of outside influences,’ Putin said, adding that the shift to national currencies ‘makes it possible to expand commodity exchanges, make reciprocal investments, and develop our own capital market regardless of the international economic situation’.
‘This doesn’t mean that we are refusing to use other payment instruments and currencies,’ Putin added during Friday’s ‘restricted-format’ meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. ‘It is just that this enhances our independence and sovereignty. This is an obvious thing, in the present-day world in particular.’
The shift to national currencies is to allow Russia and CIS partners conduct trade outside the dollar-dominated SWIFT international payments system, which has excluded major Russian banks since 2022. By using rubles, yuan, tenge and other regional currencies, countries hope to bypass Western financial intermediaries and avoid triggering sanctions that prohibit dollar transactions with designated Russian entities.
Russia has sought alternative international payment systems in response to Western financial pressure, including Moscow’s new A7 financial services architecture, launched by the state-owned Promsvyazbank and designed to facilitate cross-border trade and payments that bypass traditional international banking infrastructure. Both the United States and the European Union have reacted by imposing sanctions on A7 and its associated entities, explicitly citing its role in sanctions evasion and its alleged involvement in funding foreign election interference for pro-Russian political figures in countries like Moldova.
In addition to sanctions pressure, the EU also prohibited all transactions related to management of Central Bank of Russia reserves and assets in February 2022, resulting in immobilisation of Russian assets held by EU central banks and financial institutions.
Russia’s economy contracted 2.% in 2022 following the invasion but returned to growth in 2023 and 2024, driven primarily by increased defence spending, according to International Monetary Fund (‘IMF’) data. However, the IMF projects Russian growth will slow to around 1.3% in 2025 as the economy faces mounting pressures from labour shortages, high interest rates and the impact of sanctions, which includes constrained access to Western technology.
